


The show goes on

by feyrelay



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Counted Word Fic, Flash Fic, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Moodboards, One-Sided Attraction, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 17:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: May and Pepper and Tony are co-parenting Morgan and Maria after Pepper and Tony's break-up. It should be a wonderful thing to see, the world rebuilding itself into families of all shapes and sizes, after everything.Instead, Peter can't help feeling like since he could just as easily see himself as Tony's partner as he could being another foster-kid, well. Maybe that means neither slot is appropriate.Flash Fic, counted word challenge. '400 words on the dot'.





	The show goes on

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Peachbabypie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peachbabypie/gifts).



Peter _loves_ Morgan Stark. He absolutely loves her, and her little shadow twin, Maria, as well. They’re precious and so like Tony and Pepper and a bit of May thrown in just from exposure and it’s _awesome_.

Everything else, he swallows.

If he feels a little outside the bubble, that’s fine. At least he’s alive.

If he feels a little left behind, that’s fine. At least he’s not dust.

If it reminds Peter of his old fear, that one day Aunt May and Uncle Ben would have a 'real' child and Peter would just be the cousin, the nephew, the orphan, the stand-in, the, the, the.

That’s fine. At least Tony didn’t go like Ben.

(Even though he almost did.)

***

It stings, though. It stings that Peter’s no longer the only person around who thinks Tony hung the freaking moon, no matter what. Tony doesn’t need him for that anymore, clearly. The girls take up the post and Peter’s _happy_ for Tony, he really is, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be sad for himself.

It stings that when Shuri fits the replacement arm to Tony, he and the Winter Soldier suddenly start realizing how much they have in common and move towards a sort of detente between the two of them, with Captain Rogers beaming between them. It stings that Tony won’t touch him with the metal arm, so all Peter gets is one-armed side hugs, instead of the full-bodied, touch-starved ones he used to get after walking in on the tail end of science-benders in the lab, before.

(Before.)

It stings that Tony is now thirty-six years older, instead of thirty-one, and how that makes a relationship more impossible.

The older man’s face goes kind of square and lock-jawed when Peter slips and says as much. There’s a moment of tension that burns in Peter’s gut, aware as he is that Pepper’s amicable, but firm, divorce from Tony will finalize any day now. She and May are spending the week with Morgan and Maria, decorating the girls’ rooms in their new place.

Peter can’t even admit to himself that he’d known that little factoid when he’d asked to come up to the cabin this week, to get out of the city.

He can’t admit what he wanted, because he knows he won’t get it.

He feels it, though, like being dusted. He heals and rebreaks, heals and disintegrates. 


End file.
